Thematic Resonances: Listening as an Alternative to Data Dissection (Poster 3)

• In Event: Themes Without Coding: Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis

Abstract

Themes have been said to pin down (Flick, 2014), reduce (Cresswell, 2013), interpret, bring meaning (DeSantis & Ugarriza, 2000), and simplify (Pajo, 2018) and more, and as we engage with the messy, complicated, and always interacting and entangled materials, bodies, voices, contraptions, zoom screens, transcriptions, noises, sighs, smells and indescribable others of social science research, we desire that simplification in our research. The simplification can help us to achieve a sense of aboutness, like what is that paper about, what that person is all about, what that school is about (Author, 2020). There are processes and step by step procedures for theming and advice on whether to wait until you are finished with data collection/production (Grbich, 2013) or to attend and attune to emergent and tentative themings as they make themselves heard/known (Saldana & Omasta, 2018). Themes, most often short textual productions meant to sum up a body of data, a corpus, often ignore or belie the bodies (human and more-than-human) from which they came. However, as Manning (2019) offers, “Thought is not first in the mind. It is in the bodying. And the bodying is always in an ecology of practices” (p. 47), so any attempt to separate out the body from thought is an illusion. Yet, the impulse to separate is often there. Here, we lean into the vibrations of other bodies. In this chapter, we attune to the ecology of practices of theme. In particular, we consider what listening might offer in fleshing out thematic analysis. We offer listening as an affirmative alternative to data dissection for thematic productions. While thematic analysis aids the researcher in summing up and capturing the essence of data, a zooming out; listening has been heralded as bringing a researcher closer to the data bringing richness and detail, a zooming in. While these at first glance seem to be opposing activities, we consider the complementary opportunities of this zooming out/in for qualitative research.

Authors

• Susan Ophelia Cannon, University of Georgia

• Hannah M. Edber, Mercer University